


and this is how you keep her

by andibeth82



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2014-10-21
Packaged: 2018-02-22 02:10:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2490605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’re going to have to start from the ground up, Barton.” She traces a finger down his arm, letting the scars settle beneath her fingers. “Not everything can be re-learned in a day.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	and this is how you keep her

**Author's Note:**

> This piece, which initially came out of multiple conversations with friends about what Loki's words meant to both Clint and Natasha, has been sitting on my computer for the past few months. It finally deserves a post. Thanks to [intrikate88](http://intrikate88.tumblr.com) for beta and help that you probably don't even remember at this point.
> 
> Title from Junot Díaz's _This Is How You Lose Her_ :
> 
> You must learn her. 
> 
> You must know the reason why she is silent. You must trace her weakest spots. You must write to her. You must remind her that you are there. You must know how long it takes for her to give up. You must be there to hold her when she is about to. 
> 
> You must love her because many have tried and failed. And she wants to know that she is worthy to be loved, that she is worthy to be kept. 
> 
> And, this is how you keep her

After New York, Fury gives them a couple of weeks to regroup, recharge, re-engage (Natasha’s not really sure if he means with themselves or with the world or both) and they find themselves standing outside of the schwarma restaurant amidst the rubble of ruined buildings, Clint dropping to his knees on the edge of a demolished curb. He looks up, ragged lines dancing across his face – lines that Natasha knows spell out more than just exhaustion – and she bends down to meet his height before pulling him up promptly by the wrist.

They end up slipping away quietly while Tony is trying to direct everyone back to the Tower and find solace in one of Natasha’s old safe houses in Queens, a place that smells like stale liquor and powdered gunfire, like nothing they know of the current world and everything of the past that they know to be real.

 

***

 

In the weeks after, things slowly begin to find a groove. Clint remains suspended from active duty under Medical’s attention, assessment pending, though Natasha suspects that Fury’s pulling strings to make sure no one clears him for anything sooner than necessary. To take her mind off of worrying about all the time Clint spends _not_ doing much of anything productive, Natasha takes a few overseas missions that she considers mostly tame – an arms dealership takedown in Tokyo, a hostage crisis in Belize, a drug cartel bust in Mexico. When she’s not out in the field, she puts in long hours at the training center, occasionally joining in on group combat sessions for new recruits. Mostly, though, she sequesters herself in the back corner of the room, away from prying eyes and sympathetic looks, working her way through a series of the same six fight moves until the room starts to spin underneath her.

(For the first time in her life, she thinks she might truly understand the mentality of Steve Rogers.)

Clint is waiting when she emerges among a throng of younger agents and immediately reaches for her hand, giving a quick squeeze before meeting her eyes. It’s subtle, it’s normal, it’s _I’m okay_ – their practiced, public shorthand after being separated while at headquarters for the first time since the beginning of their partnership. More than that, though, it’s a comfort that she knows he makes an effort to display because he recognizes she needs _some_ form of acknowledgement that he hasn’t completely let himself fall apart.

They walk the short block to her building, sharing a quiet goodbye at the end of the street before their paths begin to diverge, with her stopping mid-turn to follow his form as it folds into the crowds of the city’s streets. She can’t remember when she started keeping watch, making sure that as soon as she averted her eyes he didn’t get jumped or mugged or run over; it took her years to understand why he insisted on keeping his hellhole of an apartment in the first place when he’d been high enough in S.H.I.E.L.D. ranks to warrant someone paying for a rather comfortable living space.

And then one night, she had come over with a bottle of wine after a particularly grueling mission, an ops assignment that had left them both more knocked around than usual. He opened the door without words, helped her climb out onto the roof via the shitty mess of a fire escape, and bandaged the cuts she couldn’t reach on her own while they passed the alcohol back and forth.

_“First place I ever bought on my own dime. Kind of nice to have something of your own, somewhere that you knew before everything changed.”_

Natasha had stared out over the lights of the city, drank her wine, and never asked about his living situation again.

 

***

 

Natasha’s apartment, the S.H.I.E.L.D. issued quarters provided to her when she was in town for longer than a few days time, isn’t her home any more than most things in her life are – another fake addition that she tries to reconcile as real, another part of her existence where something was bought and created and then passed off as genuine. She keeps her routine simple for that reason: come home, store weapons, heat up some version of a microwave dinner that Coulson’s goons keep her freezer stocked with. Most nights, she’s in bed before midnight, but after the events of New York she’s admittedly found it hard to get any rest for more than three hours at a time.

It’s not so easy to sleep anymore, anyway. It hasn’t been for years, but she’s become better at it than she once was, has learned how to tune out the monsters and memories in a way that allows her to at least rest semi-comfortably throughout the night. When she was first indoctrinated into the organization, Fury had taken it upon himself to pile on the psychologists and medical experts, something Natasha figured was less due to a genuine care for her well-being and more to make sure that she wasn’t going to become an unstable liability. And even with the best shrinks S.H.I.E.L.D. could offer, none of it had done anything to soothe the constant rock in her stomach, the one that’s always present when she lets herself think about the fact that she’ll probably never be able to close her eyes without some part of her feeling on edge. Natasha hasn’t expected to ever _not_ feel it, nor has she told anyone that the closest she’s ever come to having that feeling erased is when she shares a bed with Clint, mission or not.

The soft crash in the far corner of the bedroom sounds like a gunshot to her trained senses, and her hearing picks the sound up before her brain fully comprehends it. Natasha snaps her eyes open, one hand instinctively reaching for the gun tucked beneath her mattress, keeping her body effortlessly still as the figure advances. She lets her breaths come and go in quiet, barely visible puffs, a human camouflage in a room of blackness, and when she’s absolutely sure the intruder is just in the right range for her to make a perfect shot she flips her body upwards out of bed, her stance rigidly straight, feet planted securely on the floor.

The figure moves near the window that she can now see is broken, glass littering the floor, while the dim moonlight casts shadows over a profile she knows like the back of her hand. Natasha clicks off the safety before throwing her gun to the side, all in one fell swoop.

“Barton. What the _fuck_ are you doing?”

“The…door was locked,” Clint replies hesitantly, looking down. Natasha raises an eyebrow in the dark.

“You have a key. And my phone number.”

“Yeah, I just…” He trails off, gesturing to the broken window, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck, and Natasha suddenly feels like she’s watching a five year old try to explain a mistake to his parents. She sighs in the resulting silence, blinking wearily as she runs her eyes over his face.

“Come to bed, Clint.”

He steps carefully over the rainfall of glass as she holds out a hand and pulls him towards the mattress where he folds into her, tucking his legs underneath his body and burrowing his head into her shoulder like a child. When he wakes a few hours later, a vicious machine of thrashing arms and kicking legs and unrelenting nightmares, she lets him take out whatever revenge he needs to before helping him come out of it.

 

***

 

“You’ve been driving Medical crazy,” Natasha opens the next morning while she makes coffee, neither of them having appropriately broached the subject of Clint’s late night visit. She watches out of the corner of his eye as his shoulder blades rise and fall in quick succession.

“Well, I’m glad to hear that Fury has been breaking protocol by sharing all my confidential moments.”

“Only the ones where you’ve tried to assault people for no reason,” Natasha shoots back gently, turning to place a bowl in front of him. “Which, last time I checked, was any partner’s right to know – suspension or not.” She folds her arms, giving him a hard stare. “Now, I’m assuming it’s been at least 24 hours since you’ve had any kind of food in your system, so eat. Before I make you.”

Clint frowns at her words but reluctantly obliges, spooning cereal into his mouth while she continues to busy herself around the kitchen doing absolutely nothing in particular.

“They told me I could start training again.”

Natasha carefully puts down a fork she's been drying over and over again and turns at his words, letting her face dissolve first into surprise and then indifference as she takes a seat across from him.

“I assume you told them you didn’t want to.”

Clint’s mouth opens and closes almost on cue, and he stretches out the fingers of his right hand before closing them.

“I don’t exactly trust myself with my bow,” he returns, his voice barely audible, as if it’s a detriment to say the words out loud. Natasha frowns slightly.

“So don’t use your bow. You can start by doing the easy stuff. Knives, hand to hand combat…I seem to remember you were proficient in black belt, once upon a time,” she adds with a small smile that doesn’t get returned.

“But I’ve always used a bow,” Clint intones as if he hasn’t heard a word she’s said, his voice run down and slightly sad. Natasha sighs, reaching for his hand.

“You’re going to have to start from the ground up, Barton.” She traces a finger down his arm, letting the scars settle beneath her fingers.

“Not everything can be re-learned in a day.”

 

***

 

He doesn’t ask to stay the night and she doesn’t assume he will, so naturally, when it happens that they both find themselves on the couch watching mindless reality television and it’s well past midnight, they head to her bedroom together without words, settling between the covers with their spines lined up against each other in perfect formation.

It’s this stability she’s missed, Natasha realizes, as his leg presses into her calf. This understanding of never needing to say or question anything but just _doing_ it, each of them one half of a whole, knowing the answers to unasked questions but never needing to push for them. It had been there a little after New York, when he needed the comfort in the immediate days following the attack, but there’s a feeling she hasn’t been able to shake – a distance, a hesitancy, a pullback that she knows comes with the territory after experiences like this.

She opens her eyes as his hands start to trace over her fingers and her arm, skirting across bruises still visible across the parts of her body that remain uncovered by her shirt, and hears his breath stall sharply in his lungs.

“What are these?” He asks as his fingers dance over her skin. Natasha sighs.

“Go to sleep, Clint.”

He withdraws his hand, but she knows that he’s not going to obey where the other half of her request is concerned and so she holds her breath, waiting for him to speak again.

“Did I do that?”

Natasha hesitates, remembering the way his hand had come down hard on her arm, the way his leg had kicked into her thigh, and she knows she’s not going to be able to lie.

“You’ve done worse,” she says finally, settling on the response that she thinks might affect him the least as she turns over. His eyes grow wide and dark, and she reaches for his shoulder.

“Hey. Stop that.”

“I hurt you.” His voice is slightly more than a whisper, incredulity lacing his tone, and she edges closer to his body.

“You were asleep.”

“Fuck sleep,” he spits out, shoving up against the pillows. “ _Fuck_.”

Natasha follows his lead, pushing back against the headboard. “Clint, stop.” She digs for his hand under the covers, finding his arm, and he promptly jerks away.

“I don’t want to know what else I did to you,” he says, his voice low, and Natasha shakes her head.

“There _is_ nothing else.” It’s technically a lie, all things considered, but lies and secrets are what make them who they are, they’re a part of them, and she stopped feeling bad about protecting him against certain things years ago, isn’t about to start feeling bad about it now. She traces a finger against his jaw as he pulls to the side.

“Stop,” he whispers, and she feels him stiffen against her. “I can’t…I can’t keep being the person that hurts you, Natasha.”

She pulls back at that, frustrated and a little irritated. “That’s what you think of yourself, Clint Barton. Someone who hurts me.” Her voice is flat and he looks down at his hands, his eyes downcast.

“What am I supposed to think?”

Natasha regards him carefully, trying to find a crack in the door he’s keeping closed to hide the fear she knows is manifesting underneath a guise of self-loathing.

“I think Loki made you afraid of yourself,” she says finally. “And he made you afraid of me.”

“I’m not…” Clint looks away, as if desperate to escape her gaze, as if he’s scared she might pick up on what he’s trying so hard not to admit. “That’s not true.”

“No?” Natasha’s voice rises slightly, a tinge of irritation pricking at the edges. “You don’t want to use your bow. You don’t want to train. You don’t want to touch me. You refuse to make progress with Medical, even when you know it could get you back in the field faster. Tell me again, Clint, that you’re not afraid.”

He doesn’t answer, twisting his hands in the covers, and she leans back as his face contorts into something she can only describe as helplessness, watching the way it crumples before she lets her voice soften.

“That’s what he wanted, isn’t it?”

“He wanted me to kill you,” Clint replies hoarsely and although it’s not a surprise, although it’s not something that she hasn’t known since the moment he stepped onto the Helicarrier, Natasha still can’t help the icy chill that cuts through her stomach.

“You could’ve killed me years ago. You could’ve killed me two days ago,” she points out, swallowing down her emotions. “I’m not invincible, Clint, and neither are you. Loki may have manipulated you, but he didn’t mastermind that part of us.”

“It’s not the same thing,” he says miserably, and she doesn’t miss the self-destructive tone starting to materialize in his voice. Natasha shakes her head, yanking up her sleeve.

“See this?” She points to one of the scars, already scabbing over. “That’s from where you bit me. When you thought we were fighting again.” She lifts her leg, pulling up her sweatpants to the knee. “And that scratch, that’s from where your hands were trying to push me away, because you thought I was someone else that you were going to hurt.” She shifts slightly. “ _This_ is the way we take care of each other, Clint. And I’d rather be your punching bag, I’d rather wear your scars than be lying here without any, because you’re dead.”

Clint looks down, drawing into himself. “I don’t want to take advantage of you like that. I…that’s not what I want.”

“Well, that’s not what I signed up for, either,” Natasha responds a little bitterly. “Last I checked, you promised me I’d never have to compromise myself for someone else.”

“I meant it,” Clint says quietly, almost fiercely, as if he’s worried she’ll find a loophole in the truth he once so desperately fought to make her believe. Natasha nods, inching closer.

“So did I.”

Clint meets her eyes, and she runs a hand down his face, her touch gentle.

“How can I help?” She asks gently, padding her thumb along his chin. He shakes his head, silent for a long time before speaking.

“Tell me…tell me again what I do to you,” he says, his voice on the verge of shakiness, of hysteria. Natasha bites her lip and slowly gets up out of the bed until she’s standing in front of him, rigid and tall.

She removes her shirt before stepping out of her pajama shorts, letting them pool to the floor along with her underpants before she gets back into bed. She watches the way his eyes rove over his body, hungry and cautious all at once, and moves her fingers through his hair, edging herself closer her other hand guides his own palm to her breast.

“You do that,” she says, using his fingers to massage her nipple the way someone might work a marionette, shivering under his touch, light and sensitive against her skin. Clint swallows.

“And that…” Natasha takes his other hand and places it between her legs, letting him feel the vibration of her body as his fingers slip unconsciously between her thighs, almost of their own accord. “And that,” she whispers, leaning into him, letting his forehead find its resting place against hers. She pulls away, taking note of the brightness that’s settled in his eyes, the way his fingers tighten, finding their grip on her skin. “So don’t tell me you hurt me, Clint. Because you also have the ability to love me, in the way no one else can. In the way that no one else _will._ And that’s something that Loki will _never_ take away.”

As if to prove her point, she leans down to kiss him, her tongue slipping into his mouth as his hand starts to move more vigorously, keeping pace between her legs. Arching herself upwards for better trajectory as two fingers slip inside of her, she tightens her calves around his hand as he starts to massage the edges of her clit, feeling the rigidness of his cock as his arousal digging into her stomach.

It turns her on more than she expects. Natasha pulls back, far enough to rip off his boxers, the ragged and breathless groan that he releases into her mouth sending a sensation that shoots straight down her stomach, to where his hand is now thoroughly massaging her with a force that almost feels malicious. She knows his hands, knows the long fingers and the calloused skin, knows that as much as they can work an arrow, the way they can work her body are ten times better.

“Put your mouth on me,” she breathes as his rhythm becoming more and more desperate, as if he has one goal and one goal only – to make her come, to make himself the cause of every single moment that causes her pleasure. It’s direct and it’s not subtle and it’s a reminder of everything she missed, of the fact that sex with Clint is not unlike the way they take on their missions – dedicated and thorough, full force, go all in or don’t go in at all.

To her credit, he obeys without hesitating, edging down until he’s got his face between her legs, his tongue darting out to taste her as he skillfully uses his teeth to draw her right to the edge before pulling back, the motion and resulting feeling enough just to keep her teetering on the precipice of orgasm. She makes a noise that borders on desperate, fingers digging hard into his back, nails breaking skin as he bites the inside of her thigh, buries his mouth inside her, eating her out and savoring her as if she was his reward, and she feels herself build with anticipation.

“Not yet,” she manages to whisper against his ear, pulling herself back. She shoves him down by the shoulders as he raises his head, foreplay be damned, and moves with ease, wrapping her mouth around his cock and letting her tongue skirt around the edges of his head. She’s barely begun to suck when she feels his thighs start to shake against her, and can tell he’s holding himself back from fully releasing, already on edge from perusing her own body.

Natasha slides backwards, letting her teeth graze down the side of his cock as she edges away, hearing the ragged breathing and the string of swears that escape from his mouth. She raises her eyes expectantly as if waiting for his approval to continue.

“Clint. If this isn’t what you want right now…”

“No,” he gasps with a strangled moan, as her hand continues to work its way around his head, picking up where her mouth left off, keeping his cock tight and hard. “No, I need…I need this.” He swallows, curving his neck upwards as she lets her fingers ghost over his tip, his eyes squeezed closed. “I need you,” he whispers, and the words are barely audible among a breath of air that sounds more like a cry for help.

Natasha’s lips quirk slightly, and she lets her hand rest on his leg before easily sliding into him. He’s barely inside before he starts moving harshly, effortlessly, his movements slow and sure and steady.

“I’m going to break you,” he growls and she very nearly comes on the spot at the way his voice thunders against her ear. Everything is fast and sure and the way she’s so used to and god, was the last time they slept together really before she left for Russia? It seems like forever and a day ago all at the same time.

“So break me,” she responds, finding his eyes as he moves, taking note of the fire, of the life that she notices sparking inside his pupils for perhaps the first time since before he went missing. She concentrates on holding his gaze.

“I trust you, Clint. _I trust you_.”

He speeds up at her words and with each manic push she wants to cry because of how much she’s missed the scent of him, the feel of his body inside her own, which has always been the one reassurance when she doesn’t know much about what’s real and what’s not but _this_ is real, and she knows this better than anything else, has drawn maps of their history all over his skin and can pinpoint the exact stops along the way where they’ve faltered, where they’ve thrived, where they’ve won and lost.

There’s no warning when she comes and she doesn’t allow herself to care, there’s only the sound of her scream as she loses herself inside of him, waves of pleasure coursing through her body, his own scream lost with her own as he finally lets himself go, tightening inside of her with a force that feels unreal. She relaxes onto his chest, her damp hair splayed against his stomach, her own body going slack as she throbs with the aftereffects of release. He drags one hand over her back, running his fingernails down her spine, and the feeling nearly causes her to orgasm a second time, even though her body feels like it has nothing left to give.

Natasha allows herself to roll off of his body after a moment, pressing her cheek to his flesh. There’s an erratic thump as his heart beats strong like a pulse against something almost close to broken, and she holds onto it, aligning herself with it.

“It’s not going to be okay for a long time, right?” He asks when they can both finally speak again without feeling ragged, when they’re lying side by side, hands clasped together, one leg thrown over the other and covers and clothes strewn onto the floor.

“No,” Natasha says just as quietly, because there’s no point in hiding the truth from him, and because she knows he won’t believe her if she refutes his words, anyway. “But I’ll be here to help you. And we’ll get through it like we always do. Together.”

 _We’ll be okay as long as we’re okay_ , she thinks to herself as his arms tighten around her, a missing piece on the way to being mended, two broken halves returning and remembering how it feels to be whole.


End file.
